Since coffee giants such as Starbucks began selling their wares in the grocery aisle, it has been that much tougher for small independent coffee roasters to break into the business with specialty products.

But Toronto-based 23 Degrees Roastery, an organic fair-trade roastery in North Toronto, has grown exponentially since launching a year ago, securing scores of retail clients with liberal product tastings and some savvy branding.

“We have a very small section of coffees, but it is definitely our bestselling coffee,” says Jonathan Persaud-Abrahams, director of operations at Toronto specialty meats chain The Healthy Butcher, one of the coffee roaster’s first customers. He said the company’s distinctive packaging caught his eye when owner Benjamin Yu came in to offer samples of the product.

“The four blends that we sell are just phenomenal coffees. And with names like Liquid Mettle, Mug Shot, Sucker Punch and the packaging, it really sticks into people’s heads.”

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Mr. Yu nurtured a passion for coffee over the 10 years he owned a successful café franchise in east Toronto. But his interest in coffee itself made him even keener to get into the roasting business.

“I thought it would be challenging to create new blends and roast profiles,” said Mr. Yu, who was keen to create distinct flavours.

“I find that there is a lot of over-roasting done in coffee and a lot of it tastes burnt and ashy. We wanted to try to maintain the flavour profile of each region in the 10 coffee-producing countries we source from.”

He and business partner Ben Safa, a full-time anaesthesiologist at Toronto’s Sunnybrook Hospital, initially invested about $40,000 each for the business they launched in April 2011 along with Christina Lee, a cancer research scientist at the hospital.

Mr. Yu and Ms. Lee took classes and did research to learn how to roast coffee beans. The pair did all of the initial roasting, product tasting — known in the business as “cupping” — and handpacking of the beans.

“It’s a lot of trial by error,” Mr. Yu recalled. “We burned through quite a few beans to get the right profile and once you get the right flavour the trick is to repeat it consistently. Everything we cannot sell, we package up and give to the United Way.”

The pair also took care of administration and operations. Mr. Yu’s sister, Anne Yu, was in charge of sales and marketing, and distribution was done in-house. They promoted the brand by conducting more than 100 product sampling sessions across the city in the past year with their signature line of five coffees. The 350 gram bags sell for $12.99 to $14.99 on average at retail.

The partners decided in the early stages of developing the business to choose certified organic and fair trade coffee even though the beans can cost more than double the price of regular beans. 23 Degrees gets its name from the region north and south of the equator where 99% of the world’s coffee is grown.

“Most of those countries are Third World,” Mr. Yu said. “When you have children and adults working for under $1 a day for us to have our coffee, the more coffee demand goes up — and I believe it will continue to go up — the more difficult it will be on those coffee-producing countries. It is very shortsighted to not go fair trade if you want to be sustainable.”

There are also good business reasons for small businesses to get fair trade certification, said Colin Newell, Victoria-based publisher of CoffeeCrew.com.

“The beauty of starting up a small business like this is that a lot of the marketing is done by the fair trade [organizations],” he said, and it has an established level of trust with consumers even though Canada and the United States have ample room to grow the business before they catch up to Europe. “Thirty per cent to 60% of the products sold in European countries are organic or fair trade.”

Coffee consumption is high in Canada, with 55% of people drinking it daily, compared with 24% who drink fruit juice daily, according to market research firm Synovate’s Global Trends, 2011.

The business has been kind to 23 Degrees, which has secured more than 100 listings at boutiques and grocery stores in the Toronto area since its inception, including Whole Foods and Loblaw’s flagship Toronto store at Maple Leaf Gardens. Mr. Yu and Mr. Safa have invested an additional $320,000 to buy a roaster six times the size of the original and double the size of its roasting facility. They hired an employee to take care of 90% of the roasting and recently hired a distributor.

But Mr. Yu said they are keen to not grow too quickly — 23 Degrees was approached in its third month of business by a buyer from Marshalls, the Winners’ and HomeSense affiliate, who tried the coffee at one of the company’s tasting sessions.

“They wanted to put us into 70 stores at HomeSense and then 169 Winners stores nationally, but we said no. In the beginning I want to be in specialty stores. If you go into a mass [market] like that to begin with — a Costco or a Walmart — all of the other avenues of specialty stores won’t take you.”

In the first year, 23 Degrees had sales of more than $100,000. “Even though it is not bringing us into the black yet, I consider it a win,” Mr. Yu said. The partners want to double the number of stores they are in to 200 within six to eight months.

The company’s three-year growth plan is to get distribution throughout most of Ontario by year three in 400 to 500 stores and hit $500,000 to $750,000 in revenue. They are aiming for national distribution by year five.

“Being overworked and understaffed is the big challenge right now,” Mr. Yu admits. “We would like to have longer days. But the strength of the business comes from the people you have around you, and that includes the vendors.”